Rosalea Barker: The Fonzie Factor

The Fonzie Factor

Amidst all the advice being given out in
national media about how parents should discuss the Newtown
killings with their children, there is one group of people
who are left out: the parents, siblings, and extended
families of those who suffer from symptoms similar to those
the shooter reportedly exhibited from childhood
onwards.

Every time something like this occurs, those
families must wonder if one day it will be them expressing
their heartfelt sorrow. Some may wonder if they are living
with some kind of monster that might reveal itself through
their child’s actions at any time, and wonder if they have
done all they can to contain it.

Your children are not
monsters. Misunderstanding is.

The national dialogue is
now supposed to be all about gun control, so I’ll say a
bit about that before getting back to what I see as a more
important issue related to what I call “the Fonzie
Factor”. I’ve written previously about the one
decisive action President Obama needs to take: Issue an
Executive Order mandating that all guns be painted pink.
Yes, even those carried by law enforcement officers.

An
April 30 deadline should work; after that date, any gun that
doesn’t conform will automatically be confiscated and
destroyed, whether licensed or not. Be bold, Mr. President.
We expect nothing less of you at this time.

So, what is
this thing I call “the Fonzie Factor”? Fonzie is the
character from the TV sitcom Happy Days, who
introduced the world to a new way of describing children who
did well in school: “nerd”. The term, which was
derogatory, was particularly associated with children who
were good at science and math. Although the sitcom was set
in the 1950s, it aired in the decades when computers were
becoming a familiar part of daily parlance if not yet daily
life.

At the very time that the United States needed to
have children honing basic math skills to prepare them for
the careers that would await them, an entire society turned
those children against achieving well—because they
didn’t want to be seen as a nerd, shunned by their peers.
Math and science are still not popular in schools in the
USA.

The reporting about the perpetrators of mass killings
is similarly fixated with what can only be described as
their nerdiness. The picture that emerges of the loner,
highly intelligent but with only vestigial social skills, is
nowadays framed in terms of diagnosis of a psychiatric
illness. The modern consensus seems to be that nerds
aren’t just weird; they’re sick. And in America, the
prime way to deal with any sickness is to dish out
pharmaceuticals. If it’s mental illness, some therapy and
counseling will be thrown in for good measure.

But is the
combination of intelligence and social ineptitude an
illness?

I’d like to take you back to the late 50s and
early 60s, to a small country town thousands of miles from
the US in a nation that was one of America’s allies in the
Cold War against the Soviet Union. When Sputnik was
launched, showing that the Russians were far ahead of the US
in the space race, the US government decided that the only
way to compete was to fast-track academically bright
students to careers in math and science. The IQ test, which
had previously only been used by the military to decide who
was or wasn’t fit to be an officer, was moved out into the
education system—not just in the States, but in the
education systems of its allies around the world. It is a
flawed test, and always has been, but its use shaped
society’s perception of who was and wasn’t
“intelligent” for decades.

The year I sat the IQ test,
three children in our small town of 5000 people scored so
highly on it they were singled out for special academic
attention. Needless to say, it did not do wonders for our
peer relations. The other girl moved to a school in a bigger
town, the boy worked on developing a tearaway (and therefore
acceptable) persona, and I just got a big head and a sense
of guilt for not even having to try very hard to do well.

I had a photographic memory. An audio one, too—I could
recite the whole of the radio story The Little Tune That
Ran Away backwards. I liked to catalog and list things.
I didn’t like unexpected changes. In fact, my only way to
deal with change was to institute it myself, because then I
had control over it. If I felt threatened by change, I’d
make some other change, even an illogical and self-defeating
one.

I was self-absorbed and shy and awkward, and just
didn’t pick up on the social signals that everyone else
relies on to negotiate relationships with others. I
preferred to be alone, cataloging my meager horde of books
and creating library cards for them, even though I knew
nobody would ever ask to borrow them. Or building a computer
out of small squares of colored paper, matchboxes, and
tiddly-winks, using instructions in a Reader’s Digest
children’s annual.

In short, I was kind of like
Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory—a character in this
cultural era who personifies what is nowadays called
Asperger’s Syndrome. (I’ll leave you to decide whether Sheldon has negated
the Fonzie Factor or compounded it to the nth degree.)

But
I was lucky enough to be growing up in a time before such
diagnoses were made. My parents very sensibly saw to it that
I learned how to interact with other people—at least in
structured situations—by getting me a weekend job behind
the counter at what is known in the US as a convenience
store. They encouraged me to try my hand at things I
wasn’t good at, and I learned to enjoy them nonetheless.
Fun things, like playing the guitar. Things that didn’t
rely on brainpower but on other, altogether different,
skills.

All of which makes me wonder if any good is
achieved by the diagnosis and pharmacological treatment of
an “illness” that is entirely manageable by establishing
foundational behaviors that will serve the child well in any
situation, including if they get depressed about not
“fitting in”.

Do the drugs do more harm than good?
I’m of the opinion that they do if they take away the
ability to recognize that what you are about to do is a
very, very stupid thing, indeed. There have been many
documented instances of people’s meds contributing to
their sense of the “rightness” of their horrific
actions. People who would not otherwise have harmed
themselves or others. It’s as if the drugs cut their
judgment brake lines, and they careen towards an outcome
that seems to them, in their medicated state, to be
inevitable.

Along with the national conversation about
guns, there needs to be a national conversation about having
a balanced view of academic achievement, and about the
diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Are we
over-diagnosing, over-counseling (which forces even more
introspection), and over-prescribing? Is the pharmaceutical
industry encouraging the medical profession to invent
illnesses just so they can sell products?

Asperger’s
Syndrome was recently, amid much controversy, removed from
the psychiatrist’s “bible” as a category of its own on
the autism spectrum, and will now be lumped in with autism
itself. Largely so that insurance companies will pay out for
the treatment costs involved. If that’s not crazy
reasoning leading to a potentially disastrous outcome,
nothing is.

I know what autism looks like—in my first
job as an adult, I worked with autistic children. They were
deeply unreachable in terms of social interaction. Far
removed from someone with just the abysmal social skills and
obsessive interests that are characteristic of Asperger’s
Syndrome.

And anyway, who among us has not been
blushingly awkward and just a tad obsessive about something
at one time or another in our lives? Who among us, when they
see someone who experiences those things to the nth degree
and has a difficult life because of it, or who sees the
anguished parents of someone whose behavior seems that of a
monster, cannot say and mean it:

There but for the grace
of God, goes you or I.

Along with our wishes for Peace,
Love, and Joy this Christmas, let’s also wish for
understanding.

Scoop Citizen Members and ScoopPro Organisations are the lifeblood of Scoop.

20 years of independent publishing is a milestone, but your support is essential to keep Scoop thriving. We are building on our offering with new In-depth Engaged Journalism platform - thedig.nz.
Find out more and join us:

ALSO:

In the circumstances, yesterday’s move by Lam to scrap – rather than merely suspend – the hated extradition law that first triggered the protests three months ago, seems like the least she can do. It may also be too little, too late. More>>

The DOC-led draft Biodiversity Strategy seeks a “shared vision.” But there are more values and views around wildlife than there are species. How can we hope to agree on the shape of Aotearoa’s future biota? More>>

We are in a moment of existential peril, with interconnected climate and biodiversity crises converging on a global scale to drive most life on Earth to the brink of extinction… These massive challenges can, however, be reframed as a once in a lifetime opportunity to fundamentally change how humanity relates to nature and to each other. Read on The Dig>>